Popo, Ixta and a moment in time

In 1519, the conquistador Hernan Cortes and his few hundred probably tired and certainly stinky men, climbed the road between the Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl volcanos and beheld the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan down below.

Picture taken on the way from Mexico City to Atlixco, Puebla.

Bernal Diaz del Castillo described the moment as follows: “And when we saw all those towns and villages built on the water, and other great towns on dry land, and that straight and level causeway leading to Mexico, we were astounded. These great towns… and buildings rising from the water, all made of stone, seemed like an enchanted vision… Indeed some of our soldiers asked whether it was not all a dream… It was all so wonderful that I do not know how to describe this first glimpse of things never heard of, seen or dreamed of before…”

I have often tried to imagine how it would be like to go back in time to witness that moment. So here is a challenge: If you could go back in time to witness one event, which one would it be? Please post it as a comment… {Yes, reader, I’m talking to you}

It could be, for example, 26 November 1922, at the Valley of the Kings, in Egypt, when the archeologist Howard Carter and his group first look inside King Tutankhamen’s tomb. Imagine it! Carter made the “tiny breach in the top left hand corner” of the doorway and peers by the light of a candle gold and ebony treasures. When his patron, Lord Carnarvon, asks “Can you see anything?”, Carter replies with the famous words: “Yes, wonderful things!”

Or maybe the moment Graham Bell calls Watson in what is considered to be the first phone call?

The moment Anthony and Cleopatra meet?

To be seated at one of the Buddah’s lectures after his enlightenment? (Because we are just imagining, let’s imagine also that we can understand what he says…)

The instant Michelangelo is giving the final touches to his painting in the Sistine Chapel, the one where God’s finger almost touching Adam’s?